What are ccTLD Domains?
ccTLD stand for Country Code Top Level Domain name extensions. We are familiar with common domain name extensions and their purpose:
.com – Commercial
.net – Networking
.org – Organization (Main Non Profit)
Every country has an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes and their respective country codes can be used as domain extensions too.
Country code of India is IN and hence the ccTLD of India is: “.in”
Similarly country code of USA is US and hence its ccTLD is: “.us”
How do ccTLD Affect SEO?
Search Engines results are based on the précised location of individuals initiating search queries. Google search engine even redirect users to their country specific Google Search.
USA – Google.com
INDIA – Google.co.in
CANADA – Google.ca
United Kingdom – Google.co.uk
Similarly for every country there are their respective Google search engine domain names.
If a website belongs to India then it will be easily recognized by local audience and it can be optimized for India specific search queries.
There are some ccTLDs which are not allowed to be registered directly.
There is also a Country Code Second Level Domain, i.e commonly called ccSLD and it is not like Top Level Domain.
Like mentioned above if ccTLD is .IN its ccSLD version is .CO.IN.
First preference of every customer is a .COM domain name. .Com domain names are so common that most of the common words are not available. .IN and .CO.IN are also cheaper than .COM domain names (by many domain name registrars).
ccTLD domain names have gained huge amount of popularity in the recent past and they can be seen competing with other TLDs in search result.
Search Results are also giving more preference to factors like Page Authority, Domain Authority and Content Value rather than domain name extensions but many users prefer common TLDs over comparatively new TLDs.
We have seen great results for .IN domain names as far as SEO is concerned.
.IN is shorter to type and can be remembered easily as it mixes with domain names in some cases. Similar is the case with domain names like .IT, .US etc.
Note: There are some exceptions in ccTLDs.
Country Code of United Kingdom is ‘GB’ but it’s ccTLD is .UK.
Please share your experience with ccTLDs for in our comment section.
If you are planning to buy a ccTLD for your company or online business please share your views.
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